Britain and the Holy See: three decades and beyond

(Vatican Radio) Celebrating Britain’s relations with the Holy See: that’s the goal of a glossy new publication bringing together contributions from Catholics and Anglicans, clerics and diplomats, professors, historians and ecumenical experts.

The book looks back to Pope John Paul II’s historical visit to Britain in 1982, as well as Pope Benedict’s state visit in 2010, tracing progress on both political and religious fronts. But it also recalls the darker days of division and alienation that lasted for four and a half centuries before John Paul’s groundbreaking pastoral visit.

To delve deeper into its pages and the story it tells, Philippa Hitchen sat down with Britain’s current representative to the Holy See, Ambassador Nigel Baker. Listen to this interview:

“2012 was the 30th anniversary of two very important events, linked closely together. One was the upgrade of our diplomatic relations to full ambassadorial level, […] and the other was the first visit ever by a Pope to the shores of the United Kingdom. […] We thought it was important that 30^th anniversary shouldn’t go by without some form of recognition, so I organised here in Rome a colloquium to talk about the visit itself 30 years on, in light of the state visit of Pope Benedict in 2010 – where the two visits had taken the relationship between Britain and the Holy See, between the Anglican and the Roman Catholic church. A chance also to reflect a little bit on the history of the relationship, diplomatic, political and otherwise. It was a successful event, the quality of the presentations at the event was so high that we thought ‘we can’t just leave this, we must retain something for posterity’, so we decided to produce a book.


During the colloquium I reminded people that this our oldest embassy, our embassy to the Holy See. The first resident British ambassador – English ambassador, at the time – was sent on mission in 1479 by King Edward IV. […] So when you get into context, talking about the Britain – Holy See relationship, you have to go back a long way in history and look at the impact of history, how we’ve got to where we are now.


I think sometimes people can get confused. I always tell people I am accredited to the Holy See, which means the global Catholic network, the governance of the global Catholic Church. And I think people quite quickly realise that’s quite a different beast from a bilateral ambassador to, for example, the republic of Italy. In the colloquium and in the book we have presentations from two British cardinals, who remember the visit of Pope John Paul II vividly; we have Scottish, Welsh and English contributions; important contributions about the ecumenical relationship – both an Anglican bishop and an official of the Holy See talking about the relationship between Catholicism and Anglicanism. And I think all of these add to that complex mix which is the relationship between Britain and the Holy See, which goes far beyond the sometimes rather transactional relationship that ordinary bilateral relationships can be.”